Possibly relevant to Sarah Orne Jewett's representations
of Native Americans in her works was Helen Hunt Jackson's A Century
of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with some
of the Indian Tribes. Reprinted here are the preface by H. B. Whipple, Bishop
of Minnesota, and the introduction by Julius H. Seelye of Amherst College.
Taken together, they give the flavor of Hunt's argument and help to place
it within the context of the varieties of racist discourse about Native
Americans that circulated in the United States after the Civil War.

PREFACE.

I havebeen
requested to write a preface to this sad story of "A Century of Dishonor."
I cannot refuse the request of one whose woman's heart has pleaded so eloquently
for the poor Red men. The materials for her book have been taken from official
documents. The sad revelation of broken faith, of violated treaties, and
of inhuman deeds of violence will bring a flush of shame to the cheeks
of those who love their country. They will wonder how our rulers have dared
to so trifle with justice, and provoke the anger of God. Many of the stories
will be new to the reader. The Indian owns no telegraph, employs no press
reporter, and his side of the story is unknown to the people.

Nations, like individuals, reap exactly what they sow; they who sow robbery
reap robbery. The seed-sowing of iniquity replies in a harvest of blood.
The American people have accepted as truth the teaching that the Indians
were a degraded, brutal race of savages, whom it was the will of God should
perish at the approach of civilization. If they do not say with our Puritan
fathers that these are the Hittites who are to be driven out before the
saints of the Lord, they do accept the teaching that manifest destiny will
drive the Indians from the earth. The inexorable has no tears or pity at
the cries of anguish of the doomed race. Ahab never speaks kindly of Naboth,
whom he has robbed of his vineyard. It soothes conscience to cast mud on
the character of the one whom we have wronged.

The people have laid the causes of Indian wars at the door of the Indian
trader, the people on the border, the Indian agents, the army, and the
Department of the Interior. None of these are responsible for the Indian
wars, which have cost the United States five hundred millions of dollars
and tens of thousands of valuable lives. In the olden time the Indian trader
was the Indian's friend. The relation was one of mutual dependence. If
the trader oppressed the Indian he was in danger of losing his debt; if
the Indian refused to pay his debts, the trader must leave the country.
The factors and agents of the old fur companies tell us that their goods
were as safe in the unguarded trading-post as in the civilized village.
The pioneer settlers have had too much at stake to excite an Indian massacre,
which would overwhelm their loved ones in ruin. The army are not responsible
for Indian wars; they are "men under authority," who go where they are
sent. The men who represent the honor of the nation have a tradition that
lying is a disgrace, and that theft forfeits character. General Crook expressed
the feeling of the army when he replied to a friend who said, "It is hard
to go on such a campaign." "Yes, it is hard; but, sir, the hardest thing
is to go and fight those whom you know are in the right." The Indian Bureau
is often unable to fulfil the treaties, because Congress has failed to
make the appropriations. If its agents are not men of the highest character,
it is largely due to the fact that we send a man to execute this difficult
trust at a remote agency, and expect him to support himself and family
on $1500 a year. The Indian Bureau represents a system which is a blunder
and a crime.

The
Indian is the only human being within our territory who has no individual
right in the soil. He is not amenable to or protected by law. The executive,
the legislative, and judicial departments of the Government recognize that
he has a possessory right in the soil; but his title is merged in the tribe-the
man has no standing before the law. A Chinese or a Hottentot would have,
but the native American is left pitiably helpless. This system grew out
of our relations at the first settlement of the country. The isolated settlements
along the Atlantic coast could not ask the Indians, who outnumbered them
ten to one, to accept the position of wards. No wise policy was adopted,
with altered circumstances, to train the Indians for citizenship. Treaties
were made of the same binding force of the constitution; but these treaties
were unfilled. It may be doubted whether one single treaty has ever been
fulfilled as it would have been if it had been made with a foreign power.
The treaty has been made as between two independent sovereigns. Sometimes
each party has been ignorant of the wishes of the other; for the heads
of both parties to the treaty have been on the interpreter's shoulders,
and he was the owned creature of corrupt men, who desired to use the Indians
as a key to unlock the nation's treasury. Pledges, solemnly made, have
been shamelessly violated. The Indian has had no redress but war. In these
wars ten white men were killed to one Indian, and the Indians who were
killed have cost the Government a hundred thousand dollars each. Then came
a new treaty, more violated faith, another war, until we have not a hundred
miles between the Atlantic and Pacific which has not been the scene of
an Indian massacre.

All this while Canada has had no Indian wars. Our Government has expended
for the Indians a hundred dollars to their one. They recognize, as we do,
that the Indian has a possessory right to the soil. They purchase this
right, as we do, by treaty; but their treaties are made with the Indian
subjects
of Her Majesty. They set apart a permanent reservation
for them; they seldom remove Indians; they select agents of high character,
who receive their appointments for life; they make fewer promises, but
they fulfil them; they give the Indians Christian missions, which have
the hearty support of Christian people, and all their efforts are toward
self-help and civilization. An incident will illustrate the two systems.
The officer of the United States Army who was sent to receive Alaska from
the Russian Government stopped in British Columbia. Governor Douglas had
heard that an Indian had been murdered by another Indian. He visited the
Indian tribe; he explained to them that the murdered man was a subject
of Her Majesty; he demanded the culprit. The murderer was surrendered,
was tried, was found guilty, and was hanged. On reaching Alaska the officer
happened to enter the Greek church, and saw on the altar a beautiful copy
of the Gospels in a costly binding studded with jewels. He called upon
the Greek bishop, and said, "Your Grace, I called to say you had better
remove that copy of the Gospels from the church, for it may be stolen."
The bishop replied, "Why should I remove it? It was the gift of the mother
of the emperor, and has lain on the altar seventy years." The officer blushed,
and said, "There is no law in the Indian country, and I was afraid it might
be stolen." The bishop said, "The book is in God's house, and it is His
book, and I shall not take it away." The book remained. The country became
ours, and the next day the Gospel was stolen.

Our Indian wars are needless and wicked. The North American Indian is the
noblest type of a heathen man on the earth. He recognizes a Great Spirit;
he believes in immortality; he has a quick intellect; he is a clear thinker;
he is brave and fearless, and,until betrayed, he is true to his plighted
faith; he has a passionate love for his children, and counts it joy to
die for his people. Our most terrible wars have been with the noblest types
of the Indians, and with men who had been the white man's friend. Nicolet
said the Sioux were the finest type of wild men he had ever seen. Old traders
say that it used to be the boast of the Sioux that they had never taken
the life of a white man. Lewis and Clarke, Governor Stevens, and Colonel
Steptoe bore testimony to the devoted friendship of the Nez Percés
for the white man. Colonel Boone, Colonel Bent, General Harney, and others
speak in the highest praise of the Cheyennes. The Navahoes were a semi-civilized
people.

Our best friends have suffered more deeply from our neglect and violated
faith than our most bitter foes. Peaceable Indians often say, "You leave
us to suffer; if we killed your people, then you would take care of us."

Our Indian wars have not come wholly from violated faith. In time of peace
it has been our policy to establish "almshouses" to train and educate savage
paupers. We have purchased paint, beads, scalping-knives, to deck warriors,
and have fed them in idleness at the agency. Around this agency and along
the border were gathered influences to degrade the savage, and sink him
to a depth his fathers had never known. It has only needed a real or a
fancied wrong to have this pauperized savagery break out in deeds of blood.
Under President Grant a new departure was taken. The peace policy was little
more than a name. No change was made in the Indian system; no rights of
property were given; no laws were passed to protect the Indians. The President
did take the nomination of Indian agents from politicians, who had made
the office a reward for political service. He gave the nomination of Indian
agents to the executive committees of the missionary societies of the different
churches. Where these Christian bodies established schools and missions,
and the Government cast its influence on the side of labor, it was a success.
More has been done to civilize the Indians in the past twelve years than
in any period of our history. The Indian Ring has fought the new policy
at every step; and yet, notwithstanding our Indian wars, our violated treaties,
and our wretched system, thousands of Indians, who were poor, degraded
savages, are now living as Christian, civilized men. There was a time when
it seemed impossible to secure the attention of the Government to any wrongs
done to the Indians: it is not so to-day. The Government does listen to
the friends of the Indians, and many of the grosser forms of robbery are
stopped. No permanent reform can be secured until the heart of the people
is touched. In 1862 I visited Washington, to lay before the Administration
the causes which had desolated our fair State with the blood of those slain
by Indian massacre. After pleading in vain, and finding no redress, Secretary
Stanton said to a friend, "What does the Bishop want? If he came here to
tell us that our Indian system is a sink of iniquity, tell him we all know
it. Tell him the United States never cures a wrong until the people demand
it; and when the hearts of the people are reached the Indian will be saved."
In this book the reader will find the sad story of a century-no, not the
whole story, but the fragmentary story of isolated tribes. The author will
have her reward if it shall aid in securing justice to a noble and a wronged
race. Even with the sad experiences of the past we have not learned justice.
The Cherokees and other tribes received the Indian Territory as a compensation
and atonement for one of the darkest crimes ever committed by a Christian
nation. That territory was conveyed to them by legislation as strong as
the wit of statesmen could devise. The fathers who conveyed this territory
to the Cherokees are dead. Greedy eyes covet the land. The plans are laid
to wrest it from its rightful owners. If this great iniquity is consummated,
these Indians declare that all hope in our justice will die out of their
hearts, and that they will defend their country with their lives.

The work of reform is a difficult one; it will cost us time, effort, and
money; it will demand the best thoughts of the best men in the country.
We shall have to regain the confidence of our Indian wards by honest dealing
and the fulfilment of our promises. Now the name of a white man is to the
Indians a synonyme for "liar." Red Cloud recently paid a visit to the Black
Hills, and was hospitably entertained by his white friends. In bidding
them good-bye he expressed the hope that, if they did not meet again on
earth, they might meet beyond the grave "in a land where white men ceased
to be liars."

Dark as the history is, there is a brighter side. No missions to the heathen
have been more blessed than those among the Indians. Thousands, who were
once wild, painted savages, finding their greatest joy in deeds of war,
are now the disciples of the Prince of Peace. There are Indian churches
with Indian congregations, in which Indian clergy are telling the story
of God's love in Jesus Christ our Saviour. Where once was only heard the
medicine-drum and the song of the scalp-dance, there is now the bell calling
Christians to prayer, and songs of praise and words of prayer go up to
heaven. The Christian home, though only a log-cabin, has taken the place
of the wigwam; and the poor, degraded Indian woman has been changed to
the Christian wife and mother. With justice, personal rights, and the protection
of law, the Gospel will do for our Red brothers what it has done for other
races-give to them homes, manhood and freedom.

H.
B. Whipple, Bishop
of Minnesota.

NewYork, November
11th,
1880.

INTRODUCTION.

The present
number of Indians in the United States does not exceed three hundred thousand,
but is possibly as large now as when the Europeans began the settlement
of the North American continent. Different tribes then existing have dwindled,
and some have become extinct; but there is reason to believe that the vast
territory now occupied by the United States, if not then a howling wilderness,
was largely an unpeopled solitude. The roaming wild men who met the new
discoverers were, however; numerous enough to make the Indian problem at
the outset a serious one, while neither its gravity nor its difficulty
yet shows signs of diminution.

The difficulty is not because the Indians are wild and savage men, for
such men have in the past history of the human race been subdued and civilized
in unnumbered instances, while the changes which in our time have been
wrought among the cannibals of the South Sea and the barbarians of South
Africa, and among the wildest and most savage of the North American Indians
themselves, show abundantly that the agencies of civilization ready to
our hand are neither wanting nor weak.

The great difficulty with the Indian problem is not with the Indian, but
with the Government and people of the United States. Instead of a liberal
and far-sighted policy looking to the education and civilization and possible
citizenship of the Indian tribes, we have suffered these people to remain
as savages, for whose future we have had no adequate care, and to the consideration
of whose present state the Government has only been moved when pressed
by some present danger. We have encroached upon their means of subsistence
without furnishing them any proper return; we have shut them up on reservations
often notoriously unfit for them, or, if fit, we have not hesitated to
drive them off for our profit, without regard to theirs; we have treated
them sometimes as foreign nations, with whom we have had treaties; sometimes
as wards, who are entitled to no voice in the management of their affairs;
and sometimes as subjects, from whom we have required obedience, but to
whom we have recognized no obligations. That the Government of the United
States, which has often plighted its faith to the Indian, and has broken
it as often, and, while punishing him for his crimes, has given him no
status in the courts except as a criminal, has been sadly derelict in its
duty toward him, and has reaped the whirlwind only because it has sown
the wind, is set forth in no exaggerated terms in the following pages,
and ought to be acknowledged with shame by every American citizen.

It will be admitted now on every hand that the only solution of the Indian
problem involves the entire change of these people from a savage to a civilized
life. They are not likely to be exterminated. Unless we ourselves withdraw
from all contact with them, and leave them to roam untrammeled over their
wilds, or until the power of a Christian civilization shall make them consciously
one with us, they will not cease to vex us.

But how shall they become civilized? Civilization is in a most important
sense a gift rather than an acquisition. Men do not gain it for themselves,
except as stimulated thereto by some incitement from above themselves.
The savage does not labor for the gratifications of civilized life, since
he does not desire these. His labors and his desires are both dependent
upon some spiritual gift, which, having kindled him, quickens his desires
and calls forth his toil. Unless he has some help from without, some light
and life from above to illumine and inspire him, the savage remains a savage,
and without this all the blandishments of the civilization with which he
might be brought into contact could no more win him into a better state
than could all the light and warmth of the sun woo a desert into a fruitful
field. When English missionaries went to the Indians in Canada, they took
with them skilled laborers who should teach the Indians how to labor, and
who, by providing them at first with comfortable houses, and clothing,
and food, should awaken their desires and evoke their efforts to perpetuate
and increase these comforts. But the Indian-would not work,
and preferred his wigwam, and skins, and raw flesh, and filth to the cleanliness
and conveniences of a civilized home; and it was only as Christian influences
taught him his inner need, and how this could be supplied, that he was
led to wish and work for the improvement of his outer condition and habits
of life. The same is true everywhere. Civilization does not reproduce itself.
It must first be kindled, and can then only be kept alive by a power genuinely
Christian.

But it is idle to attempt to carry Christian influences to any one unless
we are Christian. The first step, therefore, toward the desired transformation
of the Indian is a transformed treatment of him by ourselves. In sober
earnest, our Government needs, first of all, to be Christian, and to treat
the Indian question as Christian principles require. This means at the
outset that we should be honest, and not talk about maintaining our rights
until we are willing to fulfil our obligations. It means that we should
be kind, and quite as eager to give the Indian what is ours as to get what
is his. It means that we should be wise, and patient, and persevering,
abandoning all makeshifts and temporary expedients, and setting it before
us as our fixed aim to act toward him as a brother, until he shall act
as a brother toward us. There is no use to attempt to teach Christian duty
to him in words till he has first seen it exemplified in our own deeds.

The true Christian principle of self-forgetful honesty and kindness, clearly
and continuously exhibited, is the first requisite of true statesmanship
in the treatment of the Indian question. This would not require, however,
the immediate entrance of the Indian upon all the privileges of citizenship
and self-direction. Christianized though he might be, he would need for
a longer or shorter time guardianship like a child. A wise care for his
own interests could not be expected of him at the outset, and the Government
should care for him with wise forethought. Obedience to the law should
be required of him, and the protection of the law afforded him. The jurisdiction
of the courts and the presence of the Government should be felt in the
Indian Territory and upon every Indian reservation as powerfully as in
the most enlightened portions of the land. The court should go as early
as the school, if not before, and is itself an educational agency of incalculable
importance.

When the Indian, through wise and Christian treatment, becomes invested
with all the rights and duties of citizenship, his special tribal relations
will become extinct. This will not be easily nor rapidly done; but all
our policy should be shaped toward the gradual loosening of the tribal
bond, and the gradual absorption of the Indian families among the masses
of our people. This would involve the bringing to an end of the whole system
of Indian reservations, and would forbid the continued isolation of the
Indian Territory. It is not wise statesmanship to create impassable barriers
between any parts of our country or any portions of our people.

Very difficult questions demanding very careful treatment arise in reference
to just this point. Certain Indian tribes now own certain Indian reservations
and the Indian Territory, and this right of property ought to be most sacredly
guarded. But it does not, therefore, follow that these Indians, in their
present state, ought to control the present use of this property. They
may need a long training before they are wise enough to manage rightfully
what is nevertheless rightfully their own. This training, to which their
property might fairly contribute means, should assiduously be given in
established schools with required attendance.

If the results thus indicated shall gradually come to pass, the property
now owned by the tribes should be ultimately divided and held in severalty
by the individual members of the tribes. Such a division should not be
immediately made, and, when made, it should be with great care and faithfulness;
but the Indian himself should, as soon as may be, feel both the incentives
and the restraints which an individual ownership of property is fitted
to excite, and the Government, which is his guardian, having educated him
for this ownership, should endow him with it. But until the Indian becomes
as able as is the average white man to manage his property for himself,
the Government should manage it for him, no matter whether he be willing
or unwilling to have this done.

A difficulty arises in the cases-of which there are many- where treaties
have been made by the Government of the United States with different Indian
tribes, wherein the two parties have agreed to certain definitely named
stipulations. Such treaties have proceeded upon the false view-false in
principle, and equally false in fact-that an Indian tribe, roaming in the
wilderness and living by hunting and plunder, is a nation. In order to
be a nation, there must be a people with a code of laws which they practise,
and a government which they maintain. No vague sense of some unwritten
law, to which human nature, in its lowest stages, doubtless feels some
obligation, and no regulations instinctively adopted for common defence,
which the rudest people herded together will always follow, are enough
to constitute a nation. These Indian tribes are not a nation, and nothing
either in their history or their condition could properly invest them with
a treaty-making power.

And yet when exigencies have seemed to require, we have treated them as
nations, and have pledged our own national faith in solemn covenant with
them. It were the baldest truism to say that this faith and covenant should
be fulfilled. Of course it should be fulfilled. It is to our own unspeakable
disgrace that we have so often failed therein. But it becomes us wisely
and honestly to inquire whether the spirit of these agreements might not
be falsified by their letter, and whether, in order to give the Indian
his real rights, it may not be necessary to set aside prerogatives to which
he might technically and formally lay claim. If the Indian Territory and
the Indian reservations have been given to certain tribes as their possession
forever, the sacredness of this guarantee should not shut our eyes to the
sacredness also of the real interests of the people in whose behalf the
guarantee was given. We ought not to lose the substance in our efforts
to retain the shadow; we ought not to insist upon the summum jus, when
this would become the summa injuria.

Of course the utmost caution is needed in the application of such a principle.
To admit that a treaty with the Indians may be set aside without the consent
of the Indians themselves, is to open the door again to the same frauds
and falsehoods which have so darkly branded a "Century of Dishonor." But
our great trouble has been that we have sought to exact justice from the
Indian while exhibiting no justice to him; and when we shall manifest that
all our procedure toward him is in truth and uprightness, we need have
no fear but that both his conscience and his judgment will in the end approve.